Like the monsoons, the dust storms and the mountains, the BIG Pin is also an exceptional moment, a point of reference and a mechanism to set the still landscape in motion &#; only this time through the movement of the spectator. Instead of referencing other observation towers, the Pin takes as a point of reference Frank Lloyd Wright’s celebrated Guggenheim Museum of New York. The visitor experiences the museum as a spiral motion looking inward. At the BIG Pin, the focus is reversed. Instead of a void, there is the dramatic landscape of Phoenix, Arizona.

The timeline continued as visitors descended the stairs from the present to the Singularity: the furthest hypothetical point in time predicted by futurist Ray Kurzweil. Each stair landing expanded on the future of Thinking (emergence of artificial and collective intelligence); Sensing (virtual and augmented reality); Making (manual construction to robotic manufacturing); and Moving (Interplanetary migration).

Located in Copenhagen’s Nordhavn neighborhood, BIG’s new HQ building recently topped out its -storey structure. The new HQ is architecturally anchored in Copenhagen harbor’s heritage of warehouses and factories. The small footprint at the end of the pier became the main design dilemma: how to organize a single work environment for all of us when we would have to be split between a minimum of four levels. In a counterintuitive decision, we split all the floors in half and doubled the amount of levels.

The building’s massing is born from the site which follows the existing curve of the road and wraps to create a slender m ribbon-like office space that reflects the dynamic quality of its surroundings. The rooftop acts as a fifth façade and winds down to create a string of linear garden terraces that are connected by a stair at the western edge serving as a secondary means of fire egress and a linear park.

A central canyon provides daylight and a visual connection between laboratories and offices. In the atrium a cascade of informal meeting spaces lead to the public rooftop terrace and faculty club. A public stair to the rooftop offers glimpses into the activities of the laboratories which are divided by transparent walls throughout the building to ensure visual connections between the working spaces. The upper levels have panoramic views towards the Notre Dame and the skyline of Paris.